Angry at my parents

I’m just not really sure why you are ignoring your father’s abuse of your mum? He’s awful - and has cast a long shadow over your life, he’s continued to do that by forcing you to care. I would honestly do the best thing for you, your kids and your mum - grass him up, get her carers (which is the right thing to do) focus on your own children- and be a happy visitor rather than an unhappy carer.

That's how I feel about one specific relative. I try to think, as you seem to, about how things like generational abuse have only recently been mentioned, and how different things were in the past. That's not defending it, and obviously some people might have lived at the same time and seemed caring, but I know how I instinctively do caring things with my kids because I was lucky enough to have been looked after and played with=all respect to you and others who were brought up without love yet have ended the cycle of abuse. If I'd been born a generation earlier and not looked after, maybe I would be uncaring like the relative I mentioned, I just don't know.

This is assuming a huge amount.
The mental capacity test bears no relation to dementia other than people with dementia may not have capacity depending upon how affected they are by their condition.

Definitely.

to be fair I was ever alone opening my presents on Xmas Day but my mother was an alcoholic and could even be unpleasant and distant when sober. I can remember being aged 13 and coming home from school to no one there - and thinking - “oh mum must still be at work”.

but even though it was early evening - I the realised she’d been in bed from before I came home at around 4pm to about 6.30pm when she came out of her bedroom to use the toilet! This felt inappropriate to me. I was 13 and she’d knowingly left me without anyone there the whole evening !

It is not the job of a therapist to tell people what involvement to have with others.

This. Times one hundred percent.

pour your empathy and love onto those children, and focus on NOT having them post this in years to come. Be the mum they need and can adore, the parent you needed.

correct that wrong.

You have every right to be angry, so so angry. But you also have and deserve the right to heal. Your anger isn't going to hurt your parents, it's going to continue to hurt you.

You also owe your parents nothing, No one owes a parent anything. Contact LA and leave your involvement there. You deserve to be at peace and live your own life free from any abuse and harm ♥️

Contact SS. If you can wait until January, contact them, explain the situation and say due to carer breakdown and abusive childhood you can longer be involved.

By subjecting yourself to these hideous people, you will be depriving your children @DallazMajor

Perhaps that will galvanise you to stop

My dad destroyed my mum mentally and physically and left her a shell of herself, alone, to raise 5 children. I’ve struggled with relationships as have my siblings.

Have you told social services she is being abused?

This is such a difficult scenario to be in. I know it's not as easy as it maybe should be to just walk away despite what you may have been through in the past at the hands of your parents.

I think you've done brilliantly to put some distance in between you and stick to 2-3 visits a week.

I do agree though that it would be in your best interests to go further and certainly to get adult safeguarding involved as your dad's treatment of your mum is neglect at a bare minimum
and possibly abuse.

Not only that, yes, they are 85, but it's entirely possible they could have another 5-10 years and you don't deserve to have this situation weighing on you and probably getting more complex for however long it continues.

You hold all the cards. Step away. I would.

Oh dear.

I can totally understand that you don't want to be that type of person - but maybe you can be a different person. Drop the visits down to once a week, and make the visits about companionship rather than caring. So you are going in, keeping an eye on what's going on, report again if necessary - but do not step in to do any caring. Would this be an acceptable compromise for you?

If your dad implies you should do caring, then you can imply right back that if he needs assistance with caring, then he does need actual carers.

At some point this house of cards is going to come tumbling down. Unfortunately the best scenario is that it does, sooner rather than later, and you don't keep propping it up and prolonging the whole situation.

What has your therapist said about what kind of involvement you should be having with your parents?

For the sake of yourself and your children, perhaps it’s time to come that sort of person.

I honestly think sometimes my mum knows what she’s doing. She’s said to me on a few occasions “ it’s payback”.

What an unpleasant nasty woman.

Do these people have anything to do with your kids?

You have said that your parents both had horrific childhoods which is why they are like they are.

You also had a horrific childhood but you aren't passing the generational trauma on to your children and I'm sure you are a good and loving mother. There is no excuse or justification for how they both treated you as a child.

You don't need to completely abandon them if that would be a step too far, but the amount of hands-on care you are providing is obviously affecting your own wellbeing and will have a knock-on impact on your own children if you need to spend so much time with your abusive parents.

So maybe it's time to be a different kind of person.

They "have capacity" because they (presumably) don't have dementia. They both have the right to make their own decisions.

Decades ago, your mum had the choice to leave him - she didn't.
Not to minimise how hard it can be for abused women to leave, especially with young children, but at the end of the day, she had that choice and chose to stay, even if she didn't realise she was making a choice.

So whilst you may feel desperately sorry for her as well as feeling angry at her, and feeling all sorts of other emotions as well, you have to recognise that it is not your role or your job to "rescue" her from your dad's abuse.

You may decide to carry on doing the caring as you are, given how old they both are. But beware, it could be another decade - some people do live well into their nineties these days.
Equally you may decide to stop going to do the physical caring.
I say it again: It is not your responsibility to rescue your mother from him.

I think you sound like an amazing and very resilient person all considered, you are breaking what sounds like a longstanding cycle. It's not surprising you feel sad - it is desperately sad.

Honestly let them get on with it. They neglected you but expect you to care for them. Let them live unwashed in squalor until they decide to get carers. You have one life don't waste another second on them.
My parents were selfish alcoholics and neglected me, there was no way I was going to look after them once they were old and vulnerable.
You are brave to do therapy it's opens up a lot of wounds. Personally I didn't want to, I knew my parents were shit, my childhood was awful but I can't change the past. I can definitely see where my childhood shaped my decisions but I turned out ok, successful career, married nearly 30 years, mostly happy. I never wanted kids.
Just my opinion but it is hard to deal with the sadness, anger and hurt when you are seeing your abusers every week. I would step right back and focus on you. Fuck them they wouldn't do it for you, they do have capacity and they choose to make shit decisions, that's on them. Stop seeking love from them, you won't get it, love yourself xxx

I was abused by my father. I thought about what I would feel like if he died and told him I forgave him (even though I wasn’t sure if I did) as I wanted my conscience clear. I wanted to take control and not to feel he was in control. When he was dead I wouldn’t have been able to say anything I wanted to and he would have died ‘in control of me’ in my mind. he’s now died and I am happy with my decision- I feel I stopped the cycle of abuse and am a better person than he was.

I’ve had lots of therapy and it’s been incredibly painful and difficult- still not over it and probably never will be but at least I’m able to leave it behind a bit more than I felt before.

I cut contact with him - easier as he had dementia and had to go in a home - it was easier to process everything through counselling without having to see him regularly which made me feel I couldn’t move forward. Do think about what YOU need first. I bet it’s not going over to look after them. I found it very hard to put myself first but when I eventually managed it, it really helped.

I’ve been through something similar, and realising your childhood wasn’t okay brings a lot of anger and grief. That anger is valid it’s part of recognising what you didn’t get. You don’t have to just “let it go.” Feeling it is part of healing.

You do not need to feel guilty, or unreasonable. Do the bare minimum or try to find a way without taking away from your own sanity and the attention you want to provide your children. Unless people have been there, they don’t understand. I don’t love my parents, my Dad passed and I didn’t cry. I haven’t been too see his grave. No smoking gun just years of driving ny mum into the ground when she already had metal health problems. So I didn’t have a mum and still don’t as he ruined her life and she ruined mine. Exactly as you say, she started to abuse me verbally and push her problems onto me, I parented her.

Nothing but solidarity. Your post has provided at least one person (me) with comfort. I know that’s a weird thing to say, but at this time of year having parents as you describe, especially with young children can be so triggering. I also don’t have a sibling relationship as with parents like that, no one gets out unscathed and it’s hard to keep the family unit alive without parents.

I also remember opening presents on my own, no memory of my childhood (probably for the best but likely as we didnt do anything or go anywhere), was either never read a bedtime story or have no memory of it, I believe it’s the former. Only found out this was strange at work when I was 25 and colleagues were reminiscing, speaking about their favourite bedtime stories and someone point blank asked me what my fave was, and I confidently said I didn’t have bedtime stories, only to be met with a reaction like I’d pulled a knife out. After asking everyone I knew I realised this was very odd.

sorry for hijacking your post but you have you’re own children now and we need to look after our fragile selves, there are so many triggers around. Really hope you find a way to disconnect from them. They did you wrong and you don’t have to love your parents.